The present invention relates to an information equipment having a handwritten character recognition function as an input means and, more particularly, to a character recognizing apparatus connected to a line such as a network and capable of exchanging handwritten characters, and a method of controlling the same.
Recently, pen computers have received a great deal of attention through its market, however they are not in full flourish yet. As a reason for this, the handwritten character recognition rate is not so high in practice as that described in specifications. This is because an individual has a specific peculiarity in his/her handwriting, resulting in different features of characters, or one does not have enough time to carefully write characters in some cases, resulting in scrawl. Therefore, in addition to development of an algorithm for handwritten character recognition, a method of individually customizing a recognition dictionary has been developed to reflect the personality of an individual. Various methods by registration, study, and the like can be considered as customizing methods. In any case, a personal recognition dictionary is prepared in addition to a basic recognition dictionary.
FIG. 13 is a view showing the configuration of conventional character input software. Processing associated with character input is incorporated in the system as a front-end processor (FEP) 100 for integrally processing characters regardless of keyboard input or handwriting, which can be commonly used for all applications. An input unit 101 receives input information. An edit unit 102 performs "copy", "move", "delete", "insert", and the like. After a character input from a keyboard or a handwritten KANA (Japanese syllabary) character is recognized as a character, a KANA-KANJI conversion unit 103 converts the character into a KANJI (chinese character) character. A recognition unit 104 converts handwritten input information into character code information. The recognition unit 104 is constituted by a recognition engine 105, a basic dictionary 106, a registration application 107 for individually customizing recognition, and a personal dictionary 108 prepared by the registration application 107. An OS 109 is constituted by basic software such as "Windows" or "UNIX" and performs part of communication control in addition to file or memory management. An application 110 uses the above functions.
A pen computer is used for outdoor data acquisition or sales because of portability as one of its features. For this reason, data communication between an office and a visiting destination increases its importance to make a communication function essential.
In addition, along with a progress in network, information exchange by a video conference, an electronic mail, telewriting, groupware, and the like is flourishing. A computer having a pen input function, including a pen computer, has been used as a terminal for information exchange. In application software called online KJ editor, an idea obtained from one's thought is input from a computer terminal. A host terminal can observe all ideas written at the terminals and perform editing such as rearrangement or arrangement. Since handwritten character information cannot be subjected to secondary processing, character recognition must be performed to arrange the pieces of transferred handwritten character information. When the elements of a change in input coordinates with time are sent, the handwritten character data transferred through the network can be recognized by a computer having an online handwritten character recognition function.
However, handwritten characters has features largely depending on peculiarities in handwriting, as described above. For this reason, with only a basic dictionary, a satisfactory character recognition result cannot be obtained.
Furthermore, the personal dictionary is prepared depending on the recognition algorithm. However, character recognition software applications at the terminals are often of different types or versions, so the data cannot be easily exchanged.